Mark Taylor

im in almost the exact same situation lol, built a 40m dipole last spring and spent like three weekends trimming and repositioning before i got it where i wanted. one thing nobody told me was that the height above ground really changes things too, when i raised mine from 25 feet to around 35 the resonant point shifted noticeably. so if you ever get a chance to get that apex higher it might change your readings again anyway. just something to keep in mind before you trim too aggressively.

Yeah that waiting thing is completely real and nobody really warns you about it. I've been doing ARES stuff for close to 12 years now and honestly some activations are 80% sitting around with your radio on standby. The EOC folks have their own chaos going on and sometimes they forget we're even there until they need something. Best thing I ever started doing was bringing something quiet to work on and keeping my ears open. Also dont be afraid to check in with the ARES EC every hour or so just to let them know youre available, it keeps you on their radar. The packet work between shelters is solid experience by the way. A lot of newer folks dont bother learning digital modes and then they're kind of limited when an activation actually calls for it. Sounds like you did fine.

ok so ive been messing around with satellite ops for about 3 months now and i finally got a decent pass on FO-29 last weekend. running a 2m/70cm cross yagi setup, manually tracking with a rotator that's... well, lets say its temperamental. anyway i could hear myself on the downlink but every time i tried to adjust for doppler the signal just kind of wandered all over the place and i couldnt hold a solid copy on anything. other stations were audible but like, barely. the thing thats tripping me up is the linear transponder behavior. i know on an inverting transponder if you tune up on the uplink your signal goes down on the downlink, i get that part conceptually. but in practice when im trying to compensate for doppler on both bands simultaneously while also trying to not lose the satellite because my rotator is being weird, it turns into kind of a disaster. is there a standard workflow people use for this or am i just supposed to practice until it becomes muscle memory? also does anyone run separate VFOs on completely different radios for this or is there a smarter way

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now, tech class, and im starting to get confused about what im actually allowed to do. like i understand i have HF privileges on 10m but i keep reading different things about what modes are allowed where and honestly part 97 reads like legalese to me my main question i guess is — is there like a simple breakdown somewhere of what tech licensees can actually do on HF? i was under the impression i could do SSB on 10m but someone at the club meeting said something about it only being in certain segments and i nodded like i understood but i went home and looked it up and now im more confused than before also semi related, does the FCC actually monitor this stuff? like if i accidentally transmitted in the wrong part of a band is that something that would actually get me in trouble or is it more of a gentlemans agreement type situation

yeah the menu thing on icoms is just something you have to accept i think. been running a 7610 for two years and i still occasionally go to the wrong place looking for the NR settings. what helped me was just going through every single menu item once and writing down where stuff lives, sounds tedious but after that it clicks. the waterfall really is something else once you start using it for actual operating though, not just watching. being able to see a pileup forming before you hear it gives you a few seconds head start which sounds small but makes a difference. enjoy the new rig, 40m should be good this winter.

so ive been chasing ZL7 Chatham Island for like two years now and last saturday there was a small DXpedition active on 17m and i finally got through after about 45 minutes of trying. wanted to share what actually worked because i tried a bunch of stuff before something clicked. first 20-25 minutes i was doing what everyone does, just calling on their freq or close to it and getting nowhere. the op was working split, listening up 2 to maybe 5 or so. i noticed he kept coming back to stations that were calling slightly after the tail of his transmission, not on top of each other. so i started timing it that way and also moved up to about 3.5 over his announced listening range because that part of the pile seemed thinner. also cut my call down. i was sending my full callsign twice every time which in retrospect is just dumb in a big pileup, the op already knows his own call so calling DE [mycall] [mycall] just eats time. switched to single call, short, clean. got picked up within a few more cycles after that. one thing i keep reading about is the whole frequency agility thing where you move around in the split window dynamically but honestly i dont have a great feel for how to do that without just causing more QRM. anyone have a better method for reading where the op is actually fishing vs where everyone thinks he is?

cant make dayton this year but our local club is doing a swap meet in june if anyones in the midwest. its nothing huge, maybe 30 tables, but last year someone brought in a whole estate collection and prices were pretty reasonable. ill post the details when the flyer is finalized

so ive been messing with satellites for a few weeks now, started with the FM birds just to get a feel for the passes and doppler and all that, and those went pretty well. figured id try AO-73 since its been pretty active lately and people keep saying linear transponders are where the real fun is. my setup is an FT-818 with a pair of arrow antennas, one for 2m uplink and one for 70cm downlink, running them into a diplexer into the rig. i know some people split them but this is what i had lying around. i can hear the beacon fine so i know im pointed in the right direction more or less. the problem is when i transmit i cant find my own signal in the passband. ive been using gpredict for tracking and the doppler corrections look right, or at least they match what the beacon is doing. tried bumping power up a bit but then someone on the mailing list said that's bad practice on linear birds and i should back off. so now im at like 1.5 watts output and still nothing. is the arrow diplexer combo just not going to cut it for this or am i missing something obvious about how to tune for your own downlink signal

welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about the etiquette stuff, most repeater users are pretty understanding with new folks. to answer your actual question though — yeah you want encode only for getting into the repeater. the CTCSS tone is just what the repeater needs to hear from YOU to open its squelch and let you in. you dont need to decode it on your end unless you want the repeater's signal to open your radio's squelch too, which is useful if there's a lot of interference on the frequency but honestly most people just leave decode off and let the carrier squelch handle it. as for checking if youre getting in — totally fine to just say your callsign and ask for a radio check, thats exactly what theyre there for. something like "[callsign] with a radio check" is totally normal. just dont hold the PTT for 10 seconds before you talk, some guys do that and it drives people nuts lol. give it a half second after you key up before speaking.

so the Tri-County hamfest is coming up on the 14th and im trying to figure out if its worth the drive. last year i went and honestly the swap meet tables were kinda thin but i did snag a decent SWR meter for like 8 bucks so cant complain too much. curious if anyone elses club is setting up a table this time around, our club is debating it but we'd need like 4 people willing to haul stuff and nobody wants to commit yet lol

yeah 40m has been rough lately, at least in the evenings. i had a nice surprise last thursday though, worked a station in the azores on 17m completely out of nowhere, wasnt even trying just happened to be tuning around before dinner. those random openings are honestly why i keep the rig on in the background while im doing other stuff around the house

the RF into the audio on HF is almost definitely a common mode issue — your coax shield is probably picking up RF and bringing it right into the rig. a few ferrite chokes on the coax near the radio, snap-on types work fine, should knock that right out. also worth checking the mag mount is actually making good contact with the roof, sometimes a little surface rust or paint under there kills your ground plane and makes the feedpoint impedance go wonky which just makes everything worse. on the through-hole mount question — yeah i did one on my tacoma a few years back and it really isnt that bad if you take your time. drill bit, grommet, run a short jumper to a chassis ground near the mount. the antenna performance difference over a mag mount is noticeable, especially if you park in the sun a lot and the mag slides around. just measure three times before you drill obviously. some guys use a lip mount on the rain gutter if the truck has one, avoids any holes at all.

the SDR over RemoteHams thing is kind of a known headache, the protocol wasnt really designed with that extra data stream in mind and you end up fighting the latency compensation all the time. what i ended up doing at my remote site was running the SDR on a totally separate path, like its own little linux box with spyserver on it and i just connect to that independently from the RemoteHams session. keeps them from stepping on each other and i can actually kill the SDR stream if the connection gets flaky without losing control of the main radio as for the allstar node, i mean yeah you can do it but you're right that its a lot to ask of one connection. depends a lot on your uplink speed at the remote end. if your buddy has anything decent like 10mbps+ upload it probably works okay but if hes on some DSL remnant from 2009 you're gonna have a bad time

yeah the stale spots thing is just part of life with cluster networks unfortunately. what you're seeing is that spots propogate through a network of interconnected nodes and sometimes a spot that's 20 minutes old is still sitting there looking fresh. i usually dont trust anything more than 5-10 minutes old, especially on the higher bands where conditions can flip fast. for the workflow question — honestly most people i know do exactly what you're doing at first, multiple tabs, a bit of chaos. over time you kinda develop a rhythm. i personally use dxscape on one monitor and have qrz pulled up on the side, and when something interesting pops i just middle-click the callsign right into a new tab. not elegant but it works. if youre on mac you might want to look at the web version of DX toolkit or even just the built in cluster in MacLoggerDX if you want everything in one place — that one's pretty popular with mac ops from what ive seen. the other thing worth knowing is that qrz has its own logbook and if you have an account you can cross-reference who you've already worked pretty quick. that part actually integrates nicely once you get used to it.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 for maybe a year now, mostly just scanning trunked systems and poking around on airband, but lately ive been wanting to get into HF more seriously. right now im using the direct sampling mode on the v3 and honestly it works better than i expected but there's a lot of noise floor issues and the dynamic range just isnt there when i try to listen to anything crowded like the 40m band in the evenings. been looking at the SDRplay RSP1C which is like $110 or so, and i know it has actual HF coverage built in without the direct sampling workaround, plus the 12-bit ADC versus the 8-bit on the RTL which i assume is part of why the dynamic range suffers. but im not sure if the software situation is as good — ive gotten pretty comfortable with SDR# and also been messing around with GQRX on linux. does SDRplay even play nice with those or do you have to use their own SDRuno thing? i guess my real question is whether that jump in price actually translates to a noticeably better HF experience or if im just gonna be chasing the noise floor no matter what until i sort out my antenna situation, which... yeah, that's probably a whole other thread.